It's "Fix-It-Friday" on the I ♥ Faces Blog.....basically they put up a picture that could use some help, and you can take it and work on it in your own way and see what great results you come up with. This is the first time I've participated, but I really enjoyed it!! It is nice to get my brain working and trying different solutions to make a cute photo even better.
Here's the original photo......it's a darling picture, with a super cute subject, but it is underexposed which makes it pretty dark.
The photo was a JPEG, but I still used ACR to open it and tweak some of the settings. I brightened it up a bit and adjusted the contrast and coloring a tad. His face was pretty red so I took that down a little, but you can tell that his cheeks are naturally rosy so I wanted to leave some of the redness so he didn't look pale.
I also cropped the photo in a bit closer, to get rid of some of the green background. I liked some green showing, but too much makes it distracting. I also wanted to keep his eyes in the top 1/3 of the picture, to add focus.
So here's my basic fix:
And a Black & White version....I really like my black & whites with quite a bit of contrast.
And just for fun, using a couple of my favorite actions. This is a blue vintage from my sweet friend Jess. It is so gorgeous, especially with outdoor pictures....I love it!!
And another gorgeous action, also from Jess. This one is a freebie called Hazy Days, and it too is gorgeous on outdoor photos.
Then I decided to try a horizontal crop. I really like this one because again it uses the rule of thirds with his eyes to keep the focus on him.
For this picture I used a black & white layer on top of the regular color layer and changed the opacity of the black & white to make the picture kind of desaturated.
And just for fun again, a funky black & white action called Green Tea. I think it came from Coffee Shop Rita.
It's kind of "angelic" and I think that's why I like it. It definitely wouldn't work for every picture, but it's fun to use occasionally.
5 Comments.....I Love Comments!:
great job. i think i like the 4th one best.
Very nice. It's great to see the variety of things that can be done with this.
You know, all of these fit different needs perfectly. Some vintage, some classic, some fresh and fun. I really enjoyed all the versions and reading how you created them. Thanks for sharing!
these are all so wonderful...i think the last two are my fave. i love the cropping :)
Wow. These are beautiful! Do you know if these actions work in Elements? They are gorgeous. Thanks for sharing!!
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